A Forgotten Part of Ireland

U S Government,Parick Joseph Joyce

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ...they might have received from their fathers. We have already referred to their story of the stone altar at Keem. We have also gathered from them, that several priests, natives of Achill, had been ordained in France, and returned to keep the faith alive in the land of their birth. A Father James Barrett, whose brother was killed in Erris, went to France to escape the same fate, and returned when the danger was over. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, England began to relax her penal measures for the extirpation of Catholics in Ireland, and her protestantizing forces were about to abandon the work they had three hundred years before set themselves to perform. Our beautiful Catholic ceremonial was for years unobserved, Catholic churches were in ruins, or in Protestant hands but Catholic faith and Catholic worship still drew the Irish outlaws, at the peril of their lives, to the caves and the mountains. The first priest of the century about whom any traditions survive, was Rev. Thomas McManus. He it was who baptized the very old people now living, in the houses in which they were born. For, in those simple times, the custom survived from penal days of baptizing and marrying in private houses. Padruig Daeg, the poet, who composed an elegy on Father Sweeneys death, is said to have come foul of Father McManus once on a station day. A reconciliation, however, soon followed, and the poets amende honorable was a poetic effusion on the glories of his pastors native town, Claremorris. Father McManus was alone in charge of the parish. There were then only two churches in the island. One was at Kildownett, the walls of which are still standing in the old cemetery. The other stood near the cliffs of Dukinella. The parochial residence was at...